Chapter III (2)

Some time after his return to Spain, Cabot resigned his office, and went to Bristol, where he settled about 1548, that is to say at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI. What were the motives of this fresh change? Was Cabot discontented at having been left to his own resources during his expedition? Was he hurt at the manner in which his services were recompensed? It is impossible to say. But Charles V. took advantage of Cabot's departure to deprive him of his pension, which Edward VI. hastened to replace, causing him to receive 250 marks annually, about 116_l._ and a fraction, which was a considerable sum for that period.

The post which Cabot occupied in England seems to be best expressed by the name of Intendant of the Navy; under the authority of the king and council, he appears to have superintended all maritime affairs. He issues licences, he examines pilots, he frames instructions, he draws maps, a varied and complicated function for which he possessed the rare gift of both practical and theoretical knowledge. At the same time he instructed the young king in cosmography, explained to him the variation of the compass, and was successful in interesting him in nautical matters, and in the glory resulting from maritime discoveries. It was a high and almost unique situation. Cabot used it to put into execution a project which he had long cherished.

At this period, we may almost say there was no trade in England. All commerce was in the hands of the Hanseatic towns, Antwerp, Hamburg, Bremen, &c. These companies of merchants had, on various occasions, obtained considerable reductions in import duties, and had ended by monopolizing the English trade. Cabot held that Englishmen possessed as good qualifications as these merchants for becoming manufacturers, and that the already powerful navy which England possessed might assist marvellously in the export of the products of the soil and of the manufactures. What was the use of having recourse to strangers when people could do their own business? If they had been unable up to this time to reach Cathay and India by the north-west, might they not endeavour to reach it by the north-east. And if they did not succeed, would they not find in this direction more commercial, and more civilized people than the miserable Esquimaux on the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland?

Cabot assembled some leading London merchants, laid his projects before them, and formed them into an association, of which on the 14th of December, 1551, he was named president for life. At the same time he exerted himself most vigorously with the king, and having made him understand the wrong which the monopoly enjoyed by strangers did to his own subjects, he obtained its abolition on the 23rd of February, 1551, and inaugurated the practice of free trade.

The Association of English Merchants, under the name of "Merchant Adventurers," hastened to have some vessels built, adapted to the difficulties to be encountered in the navigation of the Arctic regions. The first improvement which the English marine owed to Cabot was the sheathing of the keels, which he had seen done in Spain, but which had not hitherto been practised in England.

A flotilla of three vessels was assembled at Deptford. They were the _Buona-Speranza_, of which the command was given to Sir Hugh Willoughby, a brave gentleman who had earned a high reputation in war; the _Buona-Confidencia_, Captain Cornil Durforth; and the _Bonaventure_, Captain Richard Chancellor, a clever sailor, and a particular friend of Cabot's; he received the title of pilot-major. The sailing-master of the _Bonaventure_ was Stephen Burrough, an accomplished mariner, who was destined to make numerous voyages in the North seas, and later to become pilot in chief for England.

Although age and his important duties prevented Cabot from placing himself at the head of the expedition, he wished at least, to preside over all the details of the equipment. He himself wrote out the instructions, which have been preserved, and which prove the prudence and skill of this distinguished navigator. He there recommends the use of the log-line, an instrument intended to measure the speed of the vessel, and he desires that the journal of the events happening at sea may be kept with regularity, and that all information as to the character, manners, habits, and resources of the people visited, and the productions of the country, may be recorded in writing. The sailors were to offer no violence to the natives, but to act towards them with courtesy. All blasphemy and swearing was to be punished with severity, and also drunkenness. The religious exercises are prescribed, prayers are to be said morning and evening, and the Holy Scriptures are to be read once in the day. Cabot ends by recommending union and concord above all, and reminds the captains of the greatness of their enterprise, and the honour which they might hope to gain; finally he promises them to add his prayers to theirs for the success of their common work.

The squadron set sail on the 20th of May, 1558, in presence of the court assembled at Greenwich, amid an immense concourse of people, after fetes and rejoicings, at which the king, who was ill, could not be present. Near the Loffoden Islands, on the coast of Norway at the bearing of Wardhous, the squadron was separated from the _Bonaventure_. Carried away by the storm, Willoughby's two vessels touched, without doubt, at Nova Zembla, and were forced by the ice to return southwards. On the 18th of September, they entered the port formed by the mouth of the River Arzina in East Lapland. Some time afterwards, the _Buona-Confidencia_, separated from Willoughby by a fresh tempest, returned to England. As to the latter, some Russian fishermen found his vessel the following year, in the midst of the ice. The whole crew had died of cold. This, at least, is what we are led to suppose from the journal kept by the unfortunate Willoughby up to the month of January, 1554.

Chancellor, after having waited in vain for his two consorts at the rendezvous which had been agreed upon in case of separation, thought they must have outsailed him, and rounding the North Cape, he entered a vast gulf which was none other than the White Sea; he then landed at the mouth of the Dwina, near the monastery of St. Nicholas, on the spot upon which the town of Archangel was soon to stand. The inhabitants of these desolate places told him that the country was under the dominion of the Grand Duke of Russia. Chancellor resolved at once to go to Moscow, in spite of the enormous distance which separated him from it. The Czar then on the throne was Ivan IV. Wassiliewitch, called the Terrible. For some time before this, the Russians had shaken off the Tartar yoke, and Ivan had united all the petty rival principalities in one body politic, of which the power was already becoming considerable. The situation of Russia, exclusively continental, far from any frequented sea, isolated from the rest of Europe, of which it did not yet form part, so much were its habits and manners still Asiatic, promised success to Chancellor.

The Czar, who up to this time, had not been able to procure European merchandise, except by way of Poland, and who wished to gain access to the German seas, saw with pleasure the attempts of the English to establish a trade which would be beneficial to both parties. He not only received Chancellor courteously, but he made him most advantageous offers, granted him great privileges and encouraged him, by the kindness of his reception, to repeat his voyage. Chancellor sold his merchandise to great advantage, and after taking on board another cargo of furs, of seal and whale oils, copper, and other products, returned to England, carrying a letter from the Czar. The advantages which the Company of Merchant Adventurers had derived from this first voyage, encouraged them to attempt a second. So Chancellor the following year, made a fresh voyage to Archangel, and took two of the Company's agents to Russia, who concluded an advantageous treaty with the Czar. Then he set out again for England with an ambassador and his suite, sent by Ivan to Great Britain. Of the four vessels which composed the flotilla, one was lost on the coast of Norway, another as it left Drontheim, and the _Bonaventure_, on board of which were Chancellor and the ambassador, foundered in the Bay of Pitsligo, on the east coast of Scotland on the 10th of November, 1556. Chancellor was drowned in the wreck, being less fortunate than the Muscovite ambassador, who had the good luck to escape; but the presents and merchandise which he was carrying to England were lost.

Such was the commencement of the Anglo-Russian Company. A goodly number of expeditions succeeded each other in those parts, but it would be beside our purpose to give an account of them. Let us now return to Cabot.

It was in 1554 that Queen Mary of England was married to Philip II., King of Spain. When the latter came to England he showed himself very ill-disposed towards Cabot, who had abandoned the service of Spain, and who, at this very moment was procuring for England a commerce which would soon immensely increase the maritime power of an already formidable country. Thus we are not surprised to learn that eight days after the landing of the King of Spain, Cabot was forced to resign his office and his pension, both of which had been bestowed upon him for life by Edward VI. Worthington was nominated in his place. Mr. Nicholls thinks that this dishonourable man, who had had some quarrels with the law, had a secret mission to seize among Cabot's plans, maps, instructions, and projects, those which could be of use to Spain. The fact is that all these documents are now lost, at least unless they may yet be discovered among the archives of Simancas.

At the end of this period, history completely loses sight of the old mariner. The same mystery which hangs over his birth, also envelopes the place and date of his death. His immense discoveries, his cosmographical works, his study of the variations of the magnetic needle, his wisdom, his humane disposition, and his honourable conduct, place Sebastian Cabot in the foremost rank among discoverers. A figure lost in the shadow and vagueness of legends until our own day, Cabot owes it to his biographers, to Biddle, D'Avezac, and Nicholls, that he is now better known, more highly appreciated, and for the first time really placed in the light.

II. POLAR EXPEDITIONS.

John Verrazzano--Jacques Cartier and his three voyages to Canada-- The town of Hochelaga--Tobacco--The scurvy--Voyage of Roberval-- Martin Frobisher and his voyages--John Davis--Barentz and Heemskerke--Spitzbergen--Winter season at Nova Zembla--Return to Europe--Relics of the Expedition.

From 1492 to 1524, France had stood aloof, officially at least, from enterprises of discovery and colonization. But Francis I. could not look on quietly while the power of his rival Charles V. received a large addition by the conquest of Mexico. He therefore ordered John Verrazzano, a Venetian who was in his service, to make a voyage of exploration. We will pause here for a short time, although the various places may have already been visited on several occasions, because for the first time the banner of France floats over the shores of the New World. This exploration besides, was to prepare the way for those of Jacques Cartier and of Champlain in Canada, as well as for the unlucky experiments in colonization of Jean Ribaut, and of Laudonniere, the sanguinary voyage of reprisals of Gourgues, and Villegagnon's attempt at a settlement in Brazil.

We possess no biographical details with regard to Verrazzano. Under what circumstances did he enter the service of France? What was his title to the command of such an expedition? Nothing is known of the Venetian traveller, for all we possess of his writings is the Italian translation of his report to Francis I. published in the collection of Ramusio. The French translation of this Italian translation exists in an abridged form in Lescarbot's work on New France and in the _Histoire des Voyages_. For our very rapid epitome we shall make use of the Italian text of Ramusio, except in some passages where Lescarbot's translation has appeared to give an idea of the rich, original, and marvellously modulated language of the sixteenth century.

Having set out with four vessels to make discoveries in the ocean, says Verrazzano in a letter written from Dieppe to Francis I. on the 8th July, 1524, he was forced by a storm to take refuge in Brittany with two of his vessels, the _Dauphine_ and the _Normande_, there to repair damages. Thence he set sail for the coast of Spain, where he seems to have given chase to some Spanish vessels. We see him leave with the _Dauphine_ alone on the 17th of January, 1524, a small inhabited island in the neighbourhood of Madeira, and launch himself upon the ocean with a crew of fifty men, well furnished with provisions and ammunition for an eight months' voyage.

Twenty-five days later he has made 1500 miles to the west, when he is assailed by a fearful storm; and twenty-five days afterwards, that is to say on the 8th or 9th of March, having made about 1200 miles, he discovers land at 30 degrees north latitude, which he thought had never been previously explored. "When we arrived, it seemed to us to be very low, but on approaching within a quarter of a league we saw by the great fires which were lighted along the harbours and borders of the sea, that it was inhabited, and in taking trouble to find a harbour in which to land and make acquaintance with the country, we sailed more than 150 miles in vain, so that seeing the coast trended ever southwards, we decided to turn back again." The Frenchmen finding a favourable landing-place, perceived a number of natives who came towards them, but who fled away when they saw them land. Soon recalled by the friendly signs and demonstrations of the French, they showed great surprise at their clothes, their faces, and the whiteness of their skin. The natives were entirely naked, except that the middle of the body was covered with sable-skins, hung from a narrow girdle of prettily woven grasses, and ornamented with tails of other animals, which fell to their knees. Some wore crowns of birds' feathers. "They have brown skins," says the narrative, "and are exactly like the Saracens; their hair is black, not very long, and tied at the back of the head in the form of a small tail. Their limbs are well proportioned, they are of middle height, although a little taller than ourselves, and have no other defect beyond their faces being rather broad; they are not strong, but they are agile, and some of the greatest and quickest runners in the world." It was impossible for Verrazzano to collect any details about the manners and mode of life of these people, on account of the short time that he remained among them. The shore at this place was composed of fine sand interspersed here and there with little sandy hillocks, behind which were scattered "groves and very thick forests which were wonderfully pleasant to look upon." There were in this country, as far as we could judge, abundance of stags, fallow deer and hares, numerous lakes, and streams of sparkling water, as well as a quantity of birds.

This land lies at 34 degrees. It is therefore the part of the United States which now goes by the name of Carolina. The air there is pure and salubrious, the climate temperate, the sea is entirely without rocks, and in spite of the want of harbours it is not unfavourable for navigators.

During the whole month of March the French sailed along the coast, which seemed to them to be inhabited by a numerous population. The want of water forced them to land several times, and they perceived that the savages were most pleased with mirrors, bells, knives, and sheets of paper. One day they sent a long-boat ashore with twenty-five men in it. A young sailor jumped into the water "because he could not land on account of the waves and currents, in order to give some small articles to these people, and having thrown them to them from a distance because he was distrustful of the natives, he was cast violently on shore by the waves. The Indians seeing him in this condition, take him and carry him far away from the sea, to the great dismay of the poor sailor, who expected they were about to sacrifice him. Having placed him at the foot of a little hill, in the full blaze of the sun, they stripped him quite naked and wondered at the whiteness of his skin; then lighting a large fire they made him come to it and recover his strength, and it was then that the poor young man as well as those who were in the boat, thought that the Indians were about to massacre and immolate him, roasting his flesh in this large brazier and then eating their victim, as do the cannibals. But it happened quite differently; for having shown a desire to return to the boat they reconducted him to the edge of the sea, and having kissed him very lovingly, they retired to a hill to see him re-enter the boat."

Continuing to follow the shore northwards for more than 150 miles, the Frenchmen reached a land which seemed to them more beautiful, being covered with thick woods. Into these forests, twenty men penetrated for more than six miles and only returned to the shore from the fear of losing themselves. In this walk, having met two women, one young and the other old, with some children, they seized one of the latter who might be about eight years old, with the idea of taking him away to France; but they could not do the same with the young woman, who began to cry with all her might, calling for aid from her compatriots, who were hidden in the wood. In this place the savages were whiter than any of those hitherto met with; they snared birds and used a bow of very hard wood, and arrows tipped with fish-bones. Their canoes, twenty feet long and four feet wide, were hollowed by fire out of a trunk of a tree. Wild vines abounded and climbed over the trees in long festoons as they do in Lombardy. With a little cultivation they would no doubt produce excellent wine--"for the fruit is sweet and pleasant like ours, and we thought that the natives were not insensible to it, for in all directions where these vines grew, they had taken care to cut away the branches of the surrounding trees so that the fruit might ripen." Wild roses, lilies, violets, and all kinds of odoriferous plants and flowers, new to the Europeans, carpeted the ground everywhere, and filled the air with sweet perfumes.

After remaining for three days in this enchanting place, the Frenchmen continued to follow the coast northwards, sailing by day and casting anchor at night. As the land trended towards the east, they went 150 miles further in that direction, and discovered an island of triangular shape about thirty miles distant from the continent, similar in size to the Island of Rhodes, and upon which they bestowed the name of the mother of Francis I., Louisa of Savoy. Then they reached another island forty-five miles off, which possessed a magnificent harbour and of which the inhabitants came in crowds to visit the strange vessels. Two kings, especially, were of fine stature and great beauty. They were dressed in deer-skins, with the head bare, the hair carried back and tied in a tuft, and they wore on the neck a large chain ornamented with coloured stones. This was the most remarkable nation which they had until now met with. "The women are graceful," says the narrative published by Ramusio. "Some wore the skins of the lynx on their arms; their head was ornamented with their plaited hair and long plaits hung down on both sides of the chest; others had headdresses which recalled those of the Egyptian and Syrian women; only the elderly women, and those who were married, wore pendants in their ears of worked copper." This land is situated on the same parallel as Rome, in 41 degrees 40 minutes, but its climate is much colder.

On the 5th of May, Verrazzano left this port and sailed along the sea-shore for 450 miles. At last he reached a country of which the inhabitants resembled but little any of those whom he had hitherto met with. They were so wild that it was impossible to carry on any trade with them, or any sustained intercourse. What they appeared to esteem above everything else were fish-hooks, knives, and all articles in metal, attaching no value to all the trifling baubles which up to this time had served for barter. Twenty-five armed men landed and advanced from four to six miles into the interior of the country. They were received by the natives with flights of arrows, after which the latter retired into the immense forests which appeared to cover the whole country.

One hundred and fifty miles further on spreads out a vast archipelago composed of thirty-two islands, all near the land, separated by narrow canals, which reminded the Venetian navigator of the archipelagos which in the Adriatic border the coasts of Sclavonia and Dalmatia. At length, 450 miles further on, in latitude 50 degrees, the French came to lands which had been previously discovered by the Bretons. Finding themselves then short of provisions, and having reconnoitred the coast of America for a distance of 2100 miles, they returned to France, and disembarked safely at Dieppe in the month of July, 1524.

Some historians relate that Verrazzano was made prisoner by the savages who inhabit the coast of Labrador, and was eaten by them. A fact which is simply impossible, since he addressed from Dieppe to Francis I. the account of his voyage which we have just abridged. Besides, the Indians of these regions were not anthropophagi. Certain authors, but we have not been able to discover on the authority of what documents, nor under what circumstances this happened, relate that Verrazzano having fallen into the power of the Spaniards, had been taken to Spain and there hanged. It is wiser to admit that we know nothing certain about Verrazzano, and that we are totally ignorant what rewards his long voyage procured for him. Perhaps when some learned man shall have looked through our archives (of which the abstract and inventory are far from being finished), he may recover some new documents; but for the present we must confine ourselves to the narrative of Ramusio.

Ten years later a captain of St. Malo, named Jacques Cartier, born on the 21st of December, 1484, conceived the project of establishing a colony in the northern part of America. Being favourably received by Admiral Philippe de Chabot, and by Francis I., who asked to see the clause in Adam's will which disinherited him of the New World in favour of the kings of Spain and Portugal, Cartier left St. Malo with two vessels on the 20th of April, 1534. The vessel which carried him weighed only sixty tons and carried a crew of sixty-one men. At the end of only twenty days, so favourable was the voyage, Cartier discovered Newfoundland at Cape Bonavista. He then went northwards as far as Bird Island, which he found surrounded by ice, all broken up and melting, but on which he was able, nevertheless, to lay in a stock of five or six tons of guillemots, puffins, and penguins, without reckoning those which were eaten fresh. He then explored all the coast of the island, which at this time bore a number of Breton names, thus proving the assiduous manner in which the French frequented these shores. Then penetrating into the Strait of Belle-Isle, which separates the continent from the Island of Newfoundland, Cartier arrived at the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Along the whole of this coast the harbours are excellent: "If the land only corresponded to the goodness of the harbours," says the St. Malo sailor, "it would be a great blessing; but one ought not to call it _land_; it is rather pebbles and savage rocks and places fit for wild beasts: as for all the land towards the north, I never saw as much earth there as would fill a tumbrel." After having coasted along the continent, Cartier was cast by a tempest upon the west coast of Newfoundland, where he explored Cape Royal and Cape Milk, the Columba Islands, Cape St. John, the Magdalen Islands, and the Bay of Miramichi on the continent. In this place he had some intercourse with the savages, who showed "a great and marvellous eagerness in the acquisition of iron tools and other things, always dancing and performing various ceremonies, among others throwing sea-water on their heads with their hands; so well did they receive us that they gave us all that they had, keeping back nothing." The next day the number of the savages was even greater, and our French sailors made an ample harvest of furs and skins of animals.

After having explored the Bay of Chaleurs, Cartier arrived at the entrance of the estuary of the St. Lawrence, where he saw some natives, who possessed neither the appearance nor the language of the first. "The latter may truly be called savages, for no poorer people can be found in the world, and I think that all put together, excepting their boats and their nets, they could not have had the value of two pence half-penny. They have the head entirely shaved, with the exception of a lock of hair on the very top, which they allow to grow as long as a horse's tail, and which they fasten upon the head with some small copper needles. Their only dwelling is underneath their boats, which they overturn and then stretch themselves on the ground beneath them without any covering."

After having planted a large cross in this place, Jacques Cartier obtained the chief's permission to take away with him two of his children, whom he was to bring back again on his next voyage. Then he set out again for France, and landed at St. Malo on the 5th of September, 1534.

The following year, on the 19th of May, Cartier left St. Malo at the head of a fleet composed of three vessels called the _Grande_ and the _Petite Hermine_ and the _Emerillon_ on board of which some gentlemen of high rank had taken passages, among whom may be named Charles de la Pommeraye, and Claude de Pont-Briant, son of the Sieur de Moncevelles and cup-bearer to the Dauphin.

Very soon the squadron was dispersed by the storm, and could not be brought together again until it reached Newfoundland. After having landed at Bird Island, in Whitesand harbour, which is in Castle Bay, Cartier penetrated into the Bay of St. Lawrence. He discovered there the Island of Natiscotec which we call Anticosti, and entered a great river called Hochelaga, which leads to Canada. On the banks of this river lies the country called Saguenay, whence comes the red copper, to which the two savages whom he had taken on his first voyage gave the name of _caquetdaze_. But before entering the St. Lawrence, Cartier wished to explore the whole gulf, to see if no passage existed to the north. He afterwards returned to the Bay of the Seven Islands, went up the river, and soon reached the river Saguenay, which falls into the St. Lawrence on its northern bank. A little further on, after passing by fourteen islands, he entered the Canadian territories, which no traveller before him had ever visited.

"The next day the lord of Canada, called Donnacona, with twelve boats and accompanied by sixteen men, approached the ships. When abreast of the smallest of our vessels he began to make a palaver or preachment in their fashion, while moving his body and limbs in a marvellous manner, which is a sign of joy and confidence, and when he arrived at the flag-ship where were the two Indians who had been brought back from France, the said chief spoke to them and they to him. And they began to relate to him what they had seen in France and the good treatment which they had received, at which the said chief was very joyful, and begged the captain to give him his arms that he might kiss and embrace them, which is their mode of welcome in this country. The country of Stadacone, or St. Charles, is fertile and full of very fine trees of the same nature and kind as in France, such as oaks, elms, plum-trees, yews, cedars, vines, hawthorns--which bear fruit as large as damsons--and other trees; beneath them grows hemp as good as that of France." Cartier succeeded afterwards in reaching with his boats and his galleon a place which is the Richelieu of the present day, next, a great lake formed by the river--St. Peter's Lake--and at last he arrived at Hochelaga or Montreal, which is 630 miles from the mouth of the St. Lawrence. In this place are "ploughed lands and large and beautiful plains full of the corn of the country, which is like the millet of Brazil, as large or larger than peas, on which they live as we do on wheat. And among these plains is placed and seated the said town of Hochelaga near to and joining on to some high ground which is around the town; and which is well cultivated and quite small; from the top of it one can see very far. We named this mountain the _Mount Royal_."

The welcome given to Jacques Cartier could not have been more cordial. The chief or Agouhanna, who was crippled in all his limbs, begged the captain to touch them, as if he had asked him for a cure. Then the blind, and those who were blind in one eye, the lame, and the impotent came and sat down near Jacques Cartier, that he might touch them, so thoroughly were they persuaded that he was a god descended to heal them. "The said captain, seeing the faith and piety of this people, recited the Gospel of St. John, namely: _In principio_, making the sign of the cross over the poor sick people, praying GOD that he would give them the knowledge of our holy faith and grace to accept Christianity and baptism. Then the said captain took a book of Hours and read aloud the Passion of our Saviour, so well that all those present could hear it, all the poor people being quite silent, looking up to heaven and using the same ceremonies as they saw us use." After making themselves acquainted with the country, which could be seen for ninety miles around from the top of Mount Royal, and having collected some information about the water-falls and rapids of the St. Lawrence, Jacques Cartier returned towards Canada, where he did not delay to rejoin his ships. We owe to him the first information on tobacco for smoking, which does not seem to have been in use throughout the whole extent of the New World. "They have a herb," he says, "of which they collect great quantities during the summer for the winter; they esteem it highly, and the men alone use it in the following manner: they dry it in the sun and carry it on their necks in a small skin of an animal in the shape of a bag, with a horn of stone or of wood, then constantly they make the said herb into powder, and put it into one of the ends of the said horn; they then place a live coal upon it and blow through the other end, and so fill their body with smoke that it issues from the mouth and nostrils, as if from the shaft of a chimney. We have tried the said smoke, but after having put it into our mouths, it seemed as if there were ground pepper in them, so hot is it." In the month of December the inhabitants of Stadacone were attacked by an infectious disease which proved to be the scurvy. "This malady spread so rapidly in our vessels that by the middle of February out of our 110 men there were but ten in good health." Neither prayers, nor orisons, nor vows to our Lady of Roquamadour brought any relief. Twenty-five Frenchmen perished up to the 18th of April, and there were not four amongst them who were not attacked by the malady. But at this time a savage chief informed Jacques Cartier that a decoction of the leaves and sap of a certain tree, probably either the Canadian fir-tree or the barberry, was very salutary. As soon as two or three had experienced its beneficial effects "there was a crowding as if they would have killed each other to be the first to get the medicine; and one of the tallest and largest trees I ever saw was used in less than eight days, which had such an effect that if all the doctors of Louvain and Montpellier had been there with all the drugs of Alexandria, they had not done as much in a year as the said tree accomplished in eight days."

Some time after, Cartier, having noticed that Donnacona was trying to excite sedition against the French, caused him to be seized, as well as nine other savages, that he might take them to France, where they died. He set sail from the harbour of St. Croix on the 6th of May, descended the St. Lawrence, and after a voyage which was not marked by any incident, he landed at St. Malo on the 16th of July, 1536.

Francis I., in consequence of the report of this voyage which the St. Malo captain made to him, resolved to take effective possession of the country. After having appointed Francois de la Roque, Sieur de Roberval, viceroy of Canada, he caused five vessels to be fitted out, which being laden with provisions and ammunition for two years, were to transport Roberval and a certain number of soldiers, artizans, and gentlemen to the new colony, which they were about to establish. The five vessels set sail on the 23rd of May, 1541. They met with such contrary winds that it took them three months to reach Newfoundland. Cartier did not arrive at the harbour of St. Croix till the 23rd of August. As soon as he had landed his provisions, he sent back two of his vessels to France with letters for the king, telling him what had been done, also that the Sieur de Roberval had not yet appeared, and that they did not know what had happened to him. Then he had works commenced to clear the land, to build a fort, and to lay the first foundations of the town of Quebec. He next set out for Hochelaga, taking with him Martin de Paimpont and other gentlemen, and went to examine the three waterfalls of Sainte Marie, La Chine, and St. Louis; on his return to St. Croix, he found Roberval had just arrived. Cartier returned to St. Malo in the month of October, 1542, where, probably ten years later, he died. As to the new colony, Roberval having perished in a second voyage, it vegetated, and was nothing more than a factory until 1608, the date of the foundation of Quebec by M. de Champlain, of whom we shall relate the services and discoveries a little further on.

We have just seen how Cartier, who had set out first to seek for the north-west passage, had been led to take possession of the country and to lay the foundations of the colony of Canada. In England a similar movement had begun, set on foot by the writings of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and of Richard Wills. They ended by carrying public opinion with them, and demonstrating that it was not more difficult to find this passage than it had been to discover the Strait of Magellan. One of the most ardent partizans of this search was a bold sailor, called Martin Frobisher, who after having many times applied to rich ship-owners, at last found in Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth, a patron, whose pecuniary help enabled him to equip a pinnace and two poor barks of from twenty to twenty-five tons' burden. It was with means thus feeble, that the intrepid navigator went to encounter the ice in localities which had never been visited since the time of the Northmen. Setting out from Deptford on the 8th of June, 1576, he sighted the south of Greenland, which he took for the Frisland of Zeno. Soon stopped by the ice, he was obliged to return to Labrador without being able to land there, and he entered Hudson's Straits. After having coasted along Savage and Resolution Islands, he entered a strait which has received his name, but which is also called by some geographers, Lunley's inlet. He landed at Cumberland, took possession of the country in the name of Queen Elizabeth, and entered into some relations with the natives. The cold increased rapidly, and he was obliged to return to England. Frobisher only brought back some rather vague scientific and geographical details about the countries which he had visited; he received, however, a most flattering welcome when he showed a heavy black stone in which a little gold was found. At once all imaginations were on fire. Several lords and the Queen herself contributed to the expense of a new armament, consisting of a vessel of 200 tons, with a crew of 100 men, and two smaller barks, which carried six months' provision both for war and for nourishment. Frobisher had some experienced sailors--Fenton, York, George Best, and C. Hall, under his command. On the 31st of May, 1577, the expedition set sail, and soon sighted Greenland, of which the mountains were covered with snow, and the shores defended by a rampart of ice. The weather was bad. Exceedingly dense fogs,--as thick as pease-soup, said the English sailors,--islands of ice a mile and a half in circumferance, floating mountains which were sunk seventy or eighty fathoms in the sea, such were the obstacles which prevented Frobisher from reaching before the 9th of August, the strait which he had discovered during his previous campaign. The English took possession of the country, and pursued both upon land and sea some poor Esquimaux, who, wounded "in this encounter, jumped in despair from the top of the rocks into the sea," says Forster in his _Voyages in the North_, "which would not have happened if they had shown themselves more submissive, or if we could have made them understand that we were not their enemies." A great quantity of stones similar to that which had been brought to England were soon discovered. They were of gold marcasite, and 200 tons of this substance was soon collected. In their delight, the English sailors set up a memorial column on a peak to which they gave the name of Warwick Mount, and performed solemn acts of thanksgiving. Frobisher afterwards went ninety miles further on in the same strait, as far as a small island, which received the name of Smith's Island. There the English found two women, of whom they took one with her child, but left the other on account of her extreme ugliness. Suspecting, so much did superstition and ignorance flourish at this time, that this woman had cloven feet, they made her take the coverings off her feet, to satisfy themselves that they really were made like their own. Frobisher, now perceiving that the cold was increasing, and wishing to place the treasures which he thought he had collected, in a place of safety, resolved to give up for the present any farther search for the north-west passage. He then set sail for England, where he arrived at the end of September, after weathering a storm which dispersed his fleet. The man, woman, and child who had been carried off were presented to the Queen. It is said with regard to them, that the man, seeing at Bristol Frobisher's trumpeter on horseback wished to imitate him, and mounted with his face turned towards the tail of the animal. These savages were the objects of much curiosity, and obtained permission from the Queen to shoot all kinds of birds, even swans, on the Thames, a thing which was forbidden to every one else under the most severe penalties. They did not long survive, and died before the child was fifteen months old.

People were not slow in discovering that the stones brought back by Frobisher really contained gold. The nation, but above all the higher classes, were immediately seized with a fever bordering on delirium. They had found a Peru, an Eldorado. Queen Elizabeth, in spite of her practical good sense, yielded to the current. She resolved to build a fort in the newly discovered country, to which she gave the name of _Meta incognita_, (unknown boundary) and to leave there, with 100 men as garrison, under the command of Captains Fenton, Best, and Philpot, three vessels which should take in a cargo of the auriferous stones. These 100 men were carefully chosen; there were bakers, carpenters, masons, gold-refiners, and others belonging to all the various handicrafts. The fleet was composed of fifteen vessels, which set sail from Harwich on the 31st of May, 1578. Twenty days later the western coasts of Frisland were discovered. Whales played round the vessels in innumerable troops. It is related even that one of the vessels propelled by a favourable wind, struck against a whale with such force that the violence of the shock stopped the ship at once, and that the whale after uttering a loud cry, made a spring out of the water and then was suddenly swallowed up. Two days later, the fleet met with a dead whale which they thought must be the one struck by the _Salamander_. When Frobisher came to the entrance of the strait which has received his name, he found it blocked up with floating ice. "The barque _Dennis_, 100 tons," says the old account of George Best, "received such a shock from an iceberg that she sank in sight of the whole fleet. Following upon this catastrophe, a sudden and horrible tempest arose from the south-east, the vessels were surrounded on all sides by the ice; they left much of it, between which they could pass, behind them, and found still more before them through which it was impossible for them to penetrate. Certain ships, either having found a place less blocked with ice, or one where it was possible to proceed, furled sails and drifted; of the others, several stopped and cast their anchors upon a great island of ice. The latter were so rapidly enclosed by an infinite number of islets of ice and fragments of icebergs, that the English were obliged to resign themselves and their ships to the mercy of the ice, and to protect the ships with cables, cushions, mats, boards, and all kinds of articles which were suspended to the sides, in order to defend them from the fearful shocks and blows of the ice." Frobisher himself was thrown out of his course. Finding the impossibility of rallying his squadron, he sailed along the west coast of Greenland, as far as the strait which was soon to be called Davis' Strait, and penetrated as far as the Countess of Warwick Bay. When he had repaired his vessels with the wood which was to have been used in the building of a dwelling, he loaded the ships with 500 tons of stones similar to those which he had already brought home. Judging the season to be then too far advanced, and considering also that the provisions had been either consumed, or lost in the _Dennis_, that the wood for building had been used for repairing the vessels, and having lost 40 men, he set out on his return to England on the 31st of August. Tempests and storms accompanied him to the shores of his own country. As to the results of his expedition they were almost none as to discoveries, and the stones, which he had put on board in the midst of so many dangers, were valueless.

This was the last Arctic voyage in which Frobisher took part. In 1585 we meet with him again as vice-admiral, under Drake; in 1588 he distinguished himself against the _Invincible Armada_; in 1590 he was with Sir Walter Raleigh's fleet on the coast of Spain; finally in a descent on the coast of France, he was so seriously wounded that he had only time to bring his squadron back to Portsmouth before he died. If Frobisher's voyages had only gain for their motive, we must put this down not to the navigator himself, but to the passions of the period, and it is not the less true that in difficult circumstances, and with means the insufficiency of which makes us smile, he gave proof of courage, talent, and perseverance. To Frobisher is due, in one word, the glory of having shown the route to his countrymen, and of having made the first discoveries in the localities where the English name was destined to render itself illustrious.

If it became necessary to abandon the hope of finding in these circumpolar regions countries in which gold abounded as it did in Peru, this was no ground for not continuing to seek there for a passage to China; an opinion supported by very skilful sailors, and one which found many adherents among the merchants of London. By the aid of several high personages, two ships were equipped; the _Sunshine_, of fifty tons' burden and carrying a crew of twenty-three in number, and the _Moonshine_, of thirty-five tons. They quitted Portsmouth on the 7th of June, 1585, under the command of John Davis.

Davis discovered the entrance of the strait which received his name, and was obliged to cross immense fields of drifting ice, after having reassured his crew, who were frightened while in the midst of a dense fog, by the dash of the icebergs, and the splitting of the blocks of ice. On the 20th July, Davis discovered the Land of Desolation, but without being able to disembark upon it. Nine days later he entered Gilbert Bay, where he found a peaceable population, who gave him sealskins and furs in exchange for some trifling articles. These natives, some days afterwards, arrived in such numbers, that there were not less than thirty-seven canoes around Davis' vessels. In this place, the navigator perceived an enormous quantity of drift wood, amongst which he mentions an entire tree, which could not have been less than sixty feet in length. On the 6th of August, he cast anchor in a fine bay called Tottness; near a mountain of the colour of gold, which received the name of Raleigh, at the same time, he gave the names of Dyer and Walsingham to two capes of that land of Cumberland.

During eleven days, Davis still sailed northwards on a very open sea, free from ice, and of which the water had the colour of the Ocean. Already he believed himself at the entrance of the sea, which communicated with the Pacific, when all at once the weather changed, and became so foggy, that he was forced to return to Yarmouth, where he landed on the 30th of September.

Davis had the skill to make the owners of his ships partake in the hope which he had conceived. Thus on the 7th of May (1586), he set out again with the two ships which had made the previous voyage. To them were added the _Mermaid_ of 120 tons, and the pinnace _North Star_. When, on the 25th of June, he arrived at the southern point of Greenland, Davis despatched the _Sunshine_ and the _North Star_ towards the north, in order to search for a passage upon the eastern coast, whilst he pursued the same route as in the preceding year, and penetrated into the strait which bears his name as far as 69 degrees. But there was a much greater quantity of ice this year, and on the 17th of July, the expedition fell in with an "icefield" of such extent that it took thirteen days to coast along it. The wind after passing over this icy plain was so cold, that the rigging and sails were frozen, and the sailors refused to go any further. It was needful, therefore, to descend again to the east-south-east. There Davis explored the land of Cumberland, without finding the strait he was seeking, and after a skirmish with the Esquimaux, in which three of his men were killed, and two wounded, he set out on the 19th of September, on his return to England.

Although once more his researches had not been crowned with success, Davis still had good hope, as is witnessed by a letter, which he wrote to the Company, in which he said that he had reduced the existence of the passage to a species of certainty. Foreseeing, however, that he would have more trouble in obtaining the despatch of a new expedition, he added that the expenses of the enterprise would be fully covered by the profit arising from the fishery of walrus, seals, and whales, which were so numerous in those parts, that they appeared to have there established their head-quarters. On the 15th of May, 1587, he set sail with the _Sunshine_, the _Elizabeth_ of Dartmouth, and the _Helen_ of London. This time he went farther north than he had ever done before, and reached 72 degrees 12 minutes, that is to say, nearly the latitude of Upernavik, and he descried Cape Henderson's Hope. Stopped by the ice, and forced to retrace his way, he sailed in Frobisher's Strait, and after having crossed a large gulf, he arrived, in 61 degrees 10 minutes latitude, in sight of a cape to which he gave the name of Chudleigh. This cape is a part of the Labrador coast, and forms the southern entrance to Hudson's Bay. After coasting along the American shores as far as 52 degrees, Davis set out for England, which he reached on the 15th of September.

Although the solution of the problem had not been found, yet nevertheless, precious results had been obtained, but results to which people at that period did not attach any great value. Nearly the half of Baffin's Bay had been explored, and clear ideas had been obtained of its shores, and of the people inhabiting them. These were considerable acquisitions, from a geographical point of view, but they were scarcely those which would greatly affect the merchants of the city. In consequence, the attempts at finding a north-west passage were abandoned by the English for a somewhat long period.

A new nation was just come into existence. The Dutch--while scarcely delivered from the Spanish yoke,--inaugurated that commercial policy, which was destined to make the greatness and prosperity of their country, by the successive despatch of several expeditions to seek for a way to China by the north-east; the same project formerly conceived by Sebastian Cabot, and which had given to England the Russian trade. With their practical instinct, the Dutch had acquainted themselves with English navigation. They had even established factories at Kola, and at Archangel, but they wished to proceed further in their search for new markets. The Sea of Kara appearing to them too difficult, they resolved, acting on the advice of the cosmographer Plancius, to try a new way by the north of Nova Zembla. The merchants of Amsterdam applied therefore, to an experienced sailor, William Barentz, born in the island of Terschelling, near the Texel. This navigator set out from the Texel in 1594, on board the _Mercure_, doubled the North Cape, saw the island of Waigatz, and found himself, on the 4th of July, in sight of the coast of Nova Zembla, in latitude 73 degrees 25 minutes. He sailed along the coast, doubled Cape Nassau on the 10th of July, and three days later he came in contact with the ice. Until the 3rd of August, he attempted to open a passage through the pack, testing the mass of ice on various sides, going up as far as the Orange Islands at the north-western extremity of Nova Zembla, sailing over 1700 miles of ground, and putting his ship about no less than eighty-one times. We do not imagine that any navigator had hitherto displayed such perseverance. Let us add that he turned this long cruise to account, to fix astronomically, and with remarkable accuracy, the latitude of various points. At last, wearied with the fruitless boxing about along the edge of the pack, the crew cried for mercy, and it became necessary to return to the Texel.